The benefits of sand play are endless. There are so many different things that can be added to their sand container so that it is a little bit different each time they play.
Children can make roads for their toy cars, add boxes for buildings, make popstick fences for their farm or zoo animals. While they are doing these things they are discovering the properties of sand, developing concepts of volume and learning to handle equipment.
Physical
Like water play, sand play develops children’s large and fine motor skills. In sand children can run, jump, roll, dig, mound... At the beach, help them explore how different it feels to walk in loose, dry sand and wet, firm sand. Let them experiment with different amounts of water in their sand. Dampen sand and let them make footprints – close together, giant steps, jumping feet together. Let them explore whether they can make tunnels in both dry and dampened sand.
Language/Social Development
By burying toys in the sand children develop an understanding that even though we can’t see them, objects are still there. This is a fun way of helping children cope with parent separation, making them feel secure that the parent will return.
By burying toy dinosaurs children can pretend they are archaeologists. Use sieves to help them find buried treasures! Dampen sand and let them roll different items in their sand to see the tracks they make – toy cars with different wheels, pastry cutters, balls, doll prints etc. These things naturally stimulate the development of children’s language, and their make believe play skills.
Mathematical Concepts
- Equivalency
Children see that containers may hold the same and different amounts of water. They can discover that different shaped containers may hold the same amount of sand by using measuring units like a cup to see how many cups of sand are needed to fill the containers. - Units of Measurement
Let children begin learning how to use units of measurements by measuring how many cup fulls, lid fulls, bottle fulls etc. They do not need to use standard measures – litres etc – for their measurement. - Conservation of Volume
By experimentation, children come to see that the same amount of sand fills different shaped containers to different levels, even though the amount of sand does not change.
